I've talked about this with friends - I'd rather my kid boxed up through Golden Gloves than played high school football. Football and rugby would be last on the list of things I'd want progeny to play.

the NHL and NBA were in dire straits when the got capped, the NFL has all teams coming close to the cap so players agreed (I think it involved the move to free agency as well). MLB teams are rolling in the dough and has the strongest union. Hard to foresee them working out a cap.

Competitive balance has far less to do with the NFL's popularity than it being the perfect TV event sport. People like dynasties - the 49ers in the '80s, Cowboys of the early '90s, Patriots of the '00s

uh... why? Cable revenues are precisely why the Yankees and Red Sox have more money than anyone else. Texas and the Angels just signed billion-plus deals. The Dodgers will probably rival the Yankees/Sox in cable revenue with a new deal.

My hatred of Bettman is mostly legacy @ this point. He seems to not be as in the public eye as he used to be and that's a good thing. I still would love to see him in front of a firing line but...

Selig is basically Don Knotts. Grossly incompetent but benign at his core and the worst things he's done (All-Star Game; God Bless America) are p easily undoable. Interleague was something that was going to happen as soon as they gathered AL and NL under one banner anyway.

Goddell's track record is too short compared to the other guys.

Which laves Stern, who is pretty clearly crooked, talks to much and integrity of the game blah blah blah

My favourite incompetent commissioner was of course Bowie Kuhn. Bumbled through the '70s--an amazing decade on the field, and I'm pretty sure financially, too--making one bad decision after another. On the other hand, he laid the groundwork for all the labour acrimony of the '80s and into 1994.

I'm not saying they are unstoppable or unbreakable. I'm just saying this idea that Selig could unilaterally establish a floor/cap is nonsense. Also baseball would probably lose an entire season if they even tried it right now.

There's lots of things I hate about baseball (high ticket prices, gouging taxpayers for stadiums, a generally terrible TV product) but I'm perfectly happy with how the league is structured right now. Most of the teams that are not competitive are not competitive because they are run badly (Blue Jays might be the one exception). I don't see how a salary cap changes that. It just reduces the salaries of the best players and forces the Yankees and the Red Sox to spend less (or pay a hefty luxury tax to shits like Jeffrey Loria.)

The people who think there isn't any competitive balance in baseball obviously haven't noticed that about 25 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs in the past decade. Also the past eleven World Series have been won by nine different teams.

And before you complain that Selig has ruined the game and baseball doesn't matter any more, consider that the LA Dodgers, who were a horribly-run team with disastrous finances and the shittiest baseball owner we've seen in our lifetimes, were just sold for two fucking billion dollars. I never liked Selig but you can't dispute that baseball have never been healthier financially. Attendance has been through the roof on his watch too.

Look at what the Yankees have spent that payroll on though! It's not like overspending is some guarantee to success. You still have to scout, build a farm system, actually have a real organization. Also since you'll never see those teams balance sheets... well let's say I'm kinda dubious about the poverty of baseball team owners. And I think baseball is good for having a team as easily despicable as the Yankees (just like it benefits the NBA and the Premier League). Star teams are a big draw. That's comparatively lacking in the parity of the NFL for the most part.

The people who think there isn't any competitive balance in baseball obviously haven't noticed that about 25 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs in the past decade. Also the past eleven World Series have been won by nine different teams.

well the playoffs are partly crapshooty and the correlation is a lot more clearcut if you only look at regular season results

well the playoffs are partly crapshooty and the correlation is a lot more clearcut if you only look at regular season results

Outside of the Yankees and Red Sox (each of whom have missed the playoffs recently), the playoffs have largely been a revolving door of teams over the past few years.

And yeah, using the Royals as a counterexample to "prove" something about competitive balance in MLB is silly, it's like pointing at the LA Clippers and saying that some NBA teams aren't getting a fair shake.

the yankees have missed the playoffs once in the last, what, 16 years? it certainly helps that they're well-run and god knows the mets/cubs/etc. have not done well despite financial advantages (though there's still a significant gap between the yankees and second). but it means that the yanks can absorb a fuckup like carl pavano or aj burnett that would bury other teams.

fwiw aj burnett is, i believe, the highest-paid player in pittsburgh sports history, although much of it is coming from the yankees.

i'm not saying that there should be a hard cap, but let's not brush over the fact that spending $200m will almost certainly get you into the playoffs.